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Title
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Consent and Divorce in Icelandic Law Codes and Sagas
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Creator
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Maddie Lehrer
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Exit Requirement
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Honors Thesis
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Date of Award
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Jun-23
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June 15, 2023
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Honors Program Director
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Gavin Keulks
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Faculty Advisor
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Elizabeth Swedo
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Abstract
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The Icelandic sagas and law codes often complicate modern assumptions that Viking women had access to substantial social and political power. The Icelandic sagas shape modern understanding of medieval Icelandic tradition and law, including the institution of marriage. This institution built families, transferred wealth, and created alliances within Norse society. The sagas, written mostly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, portray a different image of women’s roles than the eleventh-century Icelandic law codes. The tenth-century introduction of Catholicism influenced the writing of both the sagas and law codes, and the way women’s roles were defined within them. One way to explore this complication in the sagas and law codes is by focusing on marriage and divorce. Historians study the way Norse unions began and ended to understand women’s roles, positions, and dexterity within the marriages and betrothals in Viking age. This analysis discusses women’s rights in marital consent and divorce, using Icelandic family sagas, historical kings’ sagas, and Grágás, the first Icelandic law code. This analysis defines women’s roles in the process of consent and divorce in both law codes and Icelandic sagas, analyzes the discrepancies between the two, and explores the Catholic Church’s moral influence on divorce and consent.
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Type
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Text
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Language
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eng
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Rights
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Western Oregon University Library has determined, as of 06/01/2023, this item is in copyright, which is held by the author. Users may use the item in accordance with copyright limitations and exceptions, including fair use. For other uses, please ask permission from the author.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
